Heavenly Serbia

From Myth to Genocide

Branimir Anzulovic

Publication Year: 1999

As violence and turmoil continue to define the former Yugoslavia, basic questions remain unanswered: What are the forces behind the Serbian expansionist drive that has brought death and destruction to Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo? How did the Serbs rationalize, and rally support for, this genocidal activity?

Heavenly Serbia traces Serbia's nationalist and expansionist impulses to the legendary battle of Kosovo in 1389. Anzulovic shows how the myth of "Heavenly Serbia" developed to help the Serbs endure foreign domination, explaining their military defeat and the loss of their medieval state by emphasizing their own moral superiority over military victory. Heavenly Serbia shows how this myth resulted in an aggressive nationalist ideology which has triumphed in the late twentieth century and marginalized those Serbs who strive for the establishment of a civil society.

"Modern Serbian nationalism...and its contradictory connections...have been sources of considerable scholarly interest...Branimir Anzulovic's compendium is a good example of the genre, made all the more useful by Anzulovic's excellent command of the literature."Ivo Banac, History of Religions

A Note on Pronunciation,Transliteration, and Translation

Introduction

An event from medieval Serbian history permeates present-
day Serbian culture and politics. The 1389 battle with the Ottoman
Turks on the Field of Kosovo still exerts a powerful influence
on the Serbs, who see it as the pivotal moment...

1. Heavenly Serbia

Folk singers played a very important role in the illiterate
and eliteless Serbian society following the Turkish conquest. Accompanying
their chanting with a one-stringed fiddle called the gusle,
they were not merely entertainers but bards...

2. The Encounter with the Turks

The union of Serbian church and nation, a Byzantine
heritage, became even tighter after the Ottoman Turkish conquest,
when Serbia ceased to exist as a territorial and political entity. Since
the nation was no longer associated with a state...

3. Dinaric Highlanders and
Their Songs

The idolatry of state and nation, nourished by their
fusion with a national church, is an important source of violence in
the Balkans, but not the only one. Ahigh level of endemic violence
can be found among the inhabitants...

4. The Dilemmas of Modern
Serbian National Identity

The cultural history of Serbia, like that of Russia and
other Eastern European Orthodoxcountries, followed a development
different from that of Catholic and Protestant Europe. In
Orthodoxcountries, the equivalent of the Middle...

5. A Vicious Circle of Lies
and Fears

Yugoslavia would have been less susceptible to violent
disintegration if, at the end of World War II, there had been a
reconciliation between the nations and factions that had fought one
another. All of them, and especially the two most guilty ones...

6. The Outsiders'
Myth-Calculations

Serbian myths were first received and amplified in the
West,as outlined above,during the Romanticist period. The second
wave of Western glorification of Serbia started during the First
World War,when that country,having precipitated the war...

Conclusion

The campaign for a Greater Serbia, which intensified
around 1980 and led to the war ten years later, should not make us
forget that many Serbs want to live in peace with their neighbors
and build an orderlyand tolerant society...

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